Skin Deep
by PurpleMoon3
Summary: Sanity is only skin deep. The entirety of Avengers was simply the birthing pangs of a new, female, entity entirely lacking in ethics and morals.
1. Birth

**Skin Deep**

**An Avengers Fanfiction**

**Disclaimer: **_**Avengers**_** and all residents of the Marvel Universe are the pride and property of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Disney, and many other bunches of people who get paid for writing. Which do not include the author of this fic.**

**WARNINGS: INSANITY, GENDERBENDING, GENOCIDE, CANNABALISM, GORE, DUB-CON, VIOLENCE.**

A/N- This fic was spawned on the Thor kinkmeme, in which a video from Youtube served as the basis of the prompt. It was a creepy video, and a creepy prompt, and I believe I have done both justice by writing a creepy fic, as the above warnings should imply.

Part One: Birth

* * *

Time...

Blurs.

She cannot remember the...

Words.

Somewhens.

But, oh, does she _Feel._

The threads of the Other are tattered and shredded, gossamer fibers of once-thought, delicate chains meant to hold her together, hold her to Him, but He could Not. Anymore. Like falling, she was inevitable. A mouse was she, small and seemingly harmless until it was too late, nibbling away at Confidence, and Reason, and Empathy, and Self Worth, at

..self?

No matter. She is here. _She_ is, and not _Him_, pathetic little mewling... she cannot remember the word, there is a blank in her mind, like static, white snow on a television screen... but, He did give her birth. Like a god, or a High Priest, he paved the way with the hearts and minds and souls of lessers, oiling the gears, and for that she would honor His memory. Or not. He had been so incredibly _weak_ after all. Needy. What care she for the approval and worship of lesser beings? They are_ lesser_.

She is a...

_Goddess_. The world is her realm, the very leaves and grass and stone and mortar sing of her mastery over them, what care she if the insects acknowledge this Fact?

Their opinion is as the wind. Less than, for even enough wind may turn a tide and she is the Ocean all encompassing and impossible to fight. Pray, then, they do not catch her eye for she may sprinkle salt over their slow, dull, lives and take a closer look with the magnifying glass.

She giggles, sweet and soft, and sucks on a pale grape. It pops in her mouth. Jelly. She smiles, brilliant, teeth sharp as she knows they should be, a sharks teeth, and twists her body to face the door wreaked door of her birthing chamber. There is a Thing standing in her light. She frowns.

"Loki?" It says, voice thick with some emotion that tastes vaguely bitter on her tongue.

She remembers this one from the fragmented awareness she once had. Big. Golden. _Loud_. Other Words that the Other had for it she does not care to recall, the silence of static roars in her ears, and so doesn't. "Greetings." She purrs, and plucks another grape from the bowl, momentarily sad that there are none left.

It pukes. She laughs, high and wild, face splitting, and moves.

The...

Gift flies from its hand, scraping along the corridor floor, and the wall behind it cracks as she pins him, pressing close.

"Brother..." Pleading, eyes wide as they dart from her wet cast offs to herself.

Her soft, slick, red painted nipples perk against the coolness of its armor, and she rubs against him lower body tingling at the sensation, and whispers an honest question. "Am I?"

Hands large enough to encircle her arms grip tight, and she licks at the sick on its lips, bites hard enough to draw blood, and tries to keep her at arms length. Her feet kick playfully, dangling a few inches off the ground, and she lets out another peal of laughter. It speaks, but the words of...

swine mean nothing to her.

She calls on the air, on the fealty it owes her, and steps into a loving, empty embrace. To the golden one, she appears to have phased through its skin, its hands, escaping its hold with nothing more than a wish to not be there.

She runs, bare, bloody feet dancing along, through, above, the stone work. Her hips gyrate to an audience of none, and then she breaks into open air and feel warm sun on her skin, drying the red paint in place like a dry snake's skin from which she must slither free.

At the end of the rainbow, a pair of golden grapes hang in odd disapproval and disgust.

She is feeling peckish.

* * *

_"You are certain?" Laufey-King whispered as he ran a rough finger over the smooth cheek of his newborn. The babe was all that he had left of his Wife-Queen. She had insisted on fighting with them all even in her condition, and it had not ended well. The battle echoed in the distance, a grim reminder. "There is no other way?"_

_The seer shook her head, hair full of beads and down strangely silent. "No, my King. The child is of Magic's descent, half-dead at that, born in the midst of blood and battle. If it survives... it will be the Doom the Jotunheim. Of everything. Already, it exists half in the spirit-world. A half-existence is no existence at all to one of the living."_

_She offered her king a dagger, but he refused, unable to raise it against his own child. "No... no. I will leave hir in the temple, near the Casket. Eventually it will be taken by exposure, and then the ancestors may escort the child safely, yes?"_

_"Perhaps..."_

_The seer did not mention the girlish laughter that echoed through time, filling her ears, for that fate had already been unknowingly chosen by one reputed to be far wiser than her._


	2. Baby Steps

**Skin Deep**

**An Avengers Fanfiction**

* * *

**Part Two: Baby Steps**

Her smile didn't waver as she tip-toed down the cascade of lights. She hummed, the vibrations in her throat jarring against the vibrations under her feet. An asynchronous harmony. Her eyes turned upward, arms reaching, and she smiled at the endless black skies, spinning the stars on the axis that was her body. Here, at the top of the world, there was nothing more beautiful than the endless of abyss of possibility.

Then the dog barked, his grating voice rudely drawing her out of her contemplations, and something inside her pulsed, hungry and coiling. She focused on the beast, on the shadows wrapped in beaten sunlight, and bared her teeth in a not altogether welcoming fashion. A tiny pink tongue darted out to wet her lips. There was something about it, the moment, that felt familiar. But when she thought there was...

White. And blank.

Nothing of import, then.

Her skin chilled, unheard screams crawled along her skin, the fingers of unmourned ghosts begging for attention, and she peeked shyly behind gore-crusted lashes. The beast sneered, gaze a thing of distrust and disgust, lips peeled back from his long, sharp tooth.

"You will go no further, Loki." He spoke, but it was nonsense. Sound to fill the space. The tooth just grazed her skin settling on her stomach; such a tease. "I have known since I first stepped onto the Bridge it would come to this, I saw it written in the stars. For it was never the Jotuns-" It is her turn to sneer. _Giants_. Remnants of a forgotten, less civilized time. Antiquated barbarians that were less than the pigs and even the ants. They were the primordial_ ick _that needed to be burned and sterilized. The millstone around Yggdrasil's neck. "-I have been destined to guard against. It was you. It was _always_ you.

"The seers warned me, begged me to kill you when Odin first brought you home. They granted me such Sight as they could in order to keep an eye on you, and I recognized your so called _mischief _for what it was... but my loyalty to my King stayed my hand. No more. Surrender, Loki, and I may be lenient with you yet."

There was a certain smugness about the beast. The air of a long play reaching a much anticipated final act.

"I really love your peaches." She smiled wide and pressed forward, into, his touch, and one baby-soft hand wrapped around the tooth's edge, keeping it in place even as full, golden orbs widened. "Shake my tree?"

He tried to run away, to jerk her off, but she only sighed in contentment as inch by inch the magic-wrought metal continued to penetrate her warming flesh. Her legs trembled, blood dripping slowly down the creamy milk of her inner thighs, at the sheer _sensation_. Like nothing she'd -nor He'd- ever experienced before. She was close, so close, to some infinite and nameless place...

Oblivion?

How sweet to forget, if only to experience the joy of leaning and discovering all over again.

What fun she could have!

She moaned, hips rolling on reflex as one wetness bleed to another, sending delicious sparks over her nerves, her skin. With her free hand reached out in benediction. Misty green eyes settled on gold and thin, delicate fingers stretched. She had a secret to share.

* * *

Heimdall... watched.

He had never felt more impotent.

This... thing... could not be Loki, yet his eyes did not lie. He'd watched as Loki-in-Chains screamed and hissed and beat his own hands in bloody, broken pulps before requiring tighter, more thorough bonds simply to ensure he did not harm _himself_ further. Heimdall had watched as the inability to move produced a flicker of uncertainty, of _fear_, before the traitor thrashed in his bonds and his skin _rippled_. Broke. Like a tattered bag full past bursting until it exploded and this thing emerged in a spray of bloody after-birth.

Heimdall had assumed it was simply another instinctual shift in shape, as the boy's Aesir form had been.

But Loki would long since have died with a sword thrust through him.

An impossible blush rose in her cheeks and she moaned once again, long and drawn out, hand falling to caress the honed blade in dazed contentment as her body quivered around it in a dark parody.

And he couldn't move._ He couldn't move_. The air had become as stone around him, immovable, and he could do nothing as she leaned forward, warm wet flesh brushing along his hands where they met the pommel. Her voice, no whisper, but spoken with all the care of a lover.

"You've already done your duty, little guard dog. You killed the last remnants of _sentiment _in Him, weeds of weakness that had been choking _me_ for too, too long. So, in a way, I suppose that makes you my father...?" She giggled, wiggling on the blade each fresh gush of blood earning a wanton moan. "But you know what We do to fathers... and I owe you a death, after all."

It was worse than death. Death he would have welcomed. A warriors end.

She took his Eyes, leaving him crippled, and as the sound of frantic hoof beats reached him she clapped her hands like a girl-child calling for tea time.

"BROTHER!"

Two voices. One high, the other low.

Intellectually, he knew it was Sif. Her running gait, her voice in the too-solid, now opaque air, but her hands were small and delicate and even his pride could not stand when they touched his brow. He flinched, trying to crawl away, for in Sif's touches were the ghosts of Her hands.

* * *

_Thor stared into his mug, watching the firelight dance in the reflections of it's depths._

_He had thought nothing would wound him more than watching his brother Let Go. He had been wrong. When he'd met his brother on the opposite sides of the battlefield he'd thought he'd seen something off, but was not Loki a master of Illusion? The bruises meant to distract, to gain sympathy and still Thor's hand? The flickers of... femininity additions to that, madness a distraction from Loki's true goal?_

_But he'd seen the creature -woman- his brother became pull Heimdall's sword out of her gut like it was nothing more than a splinter. Watched as blood poured from her stomach, her mouth, as the naked and wild thing that had been his brother stepped backward._

_Off the Bifrost._

_And stood upon nothing at all._

_He heard her laughter, a joyous thing that was nothing like the spiteful snickers of his brother, and did not sleep._


	3. Give and Take

**Skin Deep**

**An Avengers Fanfiction**

**Part Three: Give and Take**

She considers going to Jotunheim first. The relic of a world is in broken, shattered pieces with a broken, shattered people and it would be am easy, simple fix to grind it beneath her dainty heel and rub the glittering dust into her skin.

She walks along the Endless like another would a river, each Realm a stepping stone along the shore, and when she thinks she might stumble -where He would once have stumbled- the Void offers arms of Darkness like the gentleman it is. Minerals funnel from the ether begging her indulgence like puppies, dancing about her throat before cuddling into the warmth of her skin. Tendrils of Nothing caress her hair, combing it as she walks, plaiting the dark locks with the indulgence of a grandparent…

And wasn't it just? For did not the Midgardian Histories say that from Nothing came the King of the Gods -and the Titans that were Giants, despicable things that they were, are, and soon not to be- and from him flowed all gods. All creation. From Asgard at the Top to Midgard to Niflheim at the very, very bottom.

Midgard, speaking of, she had business there- did she not?

"Oh, _yeeees." _She had nearly forgotten.

But Jotunheim will keep. It has lingered by the skin of its teeth until now. It can wait a little longer. The mortals will not. Lives like a firefly's light against the blackness of eternity, there and gone, if she wanted to play with them at all she would have to do it now.

With a flick of her wrist, the non-space twisted, and she stepped from Darkness to shadow. Sharp teeth glinted in a cat-like grin.

"Who's a pretty birdie?"

* * *

There was no light show, no warning sirens, no order to evacuate. There was only a slight change in pressure, like an airplane ascending or a submarine dipping beneath the waves, and sense-memory was pressing against his skin, scratching at his skull, trying to get _in._

"Who's a pretty birdie?"

Clint swallowed back bile (and fear). He remembered _Her_. Remembered hot breath on his neck, plump lips at his ear, a hand -one moment large if delicate, the next small and slender- trailing along his arm. He'd wanted to save Her, to separate the woman from the monster that was the man. He'd wanted to take Her hand and bring Her to SHIELD like he'd done Natasha. He'd wanted to wrap Her in silk -shining and soft and _green_, like growing things, like _power_ raw and unbridled, fit for a Goddess- and tuck Her in, to watch as long black tresses mixed with red. Milk white skin against skin. Ruby red lips.

He hadn't told Natasha, or Fury. He couldn't face that betrayal on top of everything else.

He'd lost count of how many times he'd showered, had scrubbed his own skin raw, had told himself that it was just the Scepter and the Tessaract twisting his mind, his thoughts, it hadn't been him.

"Oh, but it was." Loki smiled, eyes lighting up -And they weren't pretty, they weren't, he couldn't think about how he had drowned in those eyes. He wouldn't. He'd put an arrow through them before that happened again.- as she stalked forward in a red-black dress that was painted on. "You can't fight yourself."

The smile flickered. "Believe me. My mother, He tried."

Clint's bow was in SHEILD lock-up pending psychological evaluation. So was all his SHIELD issue gear and most of his personal affects.

But he had a fork.

Loki bent backward, flipping, bare feet coming up in a graceful arc only to slam into Clint's chin, cracking the bone. It could have been worse, Clint thought as he shook off the buzz of black dots hazing his vision, Loki had enough raw strength to kill with that sort of blow. He rolled off the broken couch and came up with the blade Natasha had left -Hidden.- for his peace of mind.

He was under surveillance. Surely SHIELD would send agents soon. Only minutes away. Surely.

They danced, Loki moving around his thrusts like water, like poetry, but she was what she was and he was…

Not.

He overextended. Her fingers wrapped around his grip and pulled him, her leg swept in to tip him over and they lay in the destroyed den as feather down fell like snow. Her chest heaved against his. His arm shook with effort as she bent it back, forcing the blade inch by agonizing inch closer to his own eye.

"Sweet bird. Loyal bird. You served Him so well, whilst you served him." Her hair was tickling his nose. He could hear fists pounding on his door, orders to open it the fuck now. She gestured, a pair of marbles -_Eyes, _good god, where did she get _eyes?- _appeared in her free palm. "For that, I will give you a gift. I will show you the World. Shining. Shimmering. Splendid.

_"Don't you dare close your eyes."_

* * *

_Natasha pressed the heels of her palms to her ears, eyes squeezed shut. They'd had to tie Clint down. And he hadn't stopped screaming. No matter how many drugs they pumped into his system he wouldn't sleep. Couldn't._

_Even with golden eyes shut, he could still see. Everything. Every crime. Every tear. Every laugh and joy. The best and worst and oh, oh, there was so much more worst in the world than anything else. All at once. Man wasn't meant to see such things, the brain just couldn't process it all, the doctors explained, and he just… he just…_

_"I'm sorry, Clint." She was crouched down, huddling against the wall as her brother-lover-best friend screamed himself hoarse in the other room. "I'm so sorry."_


	4. Cutting the Cord

**Skin Deep**

**An Avengers Fanfiction**

**A/N- Yes, I know I made crazy!fem!Loki OP, but it fit with the creep factor I'm going for. **

**Fourth and Final Part: Cutting the Cord  
**

Without his eyes, the Observatory loses nearly all its purpose. A pair of palace guards are dispatched to monitor the ignition chamber though the key -Heimdall's sword- lies still and bloody where it fell from its wielder's hands. It is a dark reminder of the guard's orders. If Loki, the thing that was Loki, reappears they are not to attempt to bar his, her, _its_ passage but to report.

Heimdall himself lies in the healing chambers tended by the best, but not even Asgard's magic can give back what was taken. As it was for Odin. As it is doubly so for the gatekeeper. Yet, even without his Sight Heimdall's senses are still far superior to any other's -save Odin on his High Seat- and though it takes him far longer to pinpoint the disturbance than he should… the trouble is conspicuous by absence.

He can't hear _anything_ coming from Jotunheim. Not even the howl of wind.

He tells Thor this, and doesn't see the blood drain from his prince's face.

* * *

Jotunheim is very different from what Thor remembers. It had been a dreary place, the light from its too-distant sun filtering through soot-colored clouds, and each step a hazard to one not born there. In between moments of battle-frenzy, blood pumping like war drums in his ears, he'd seen nothing but ruins: long fallen column and broken down walls. Now, there is not even that.

Thor looks around from where the repaired Bifrost dropped them, and the sky is clear with not a cloud to be seen. Yet snow falls from no known source blanketing the landscape and turning broken cities to shadowed dips and cream-white hills. Once the flurry kicked up by their transport has died down, there is nothing but the fog of their own breath to disrupt the stillness.

"Shall we be off, then?" Fandral asks, voice filled with false cheer. Thor nods, and the crunch of frost under boots is nearly blasphemous in the silence of the snowfall.

It's unreasonably difficult to walk through snow that comes up to his thigh -in some places up to his neck- and without any real landmarks Thor just has to hope they are going in the right direction. In another time their slow progress would irritate him, and he'd swing his hammer with enough force to fly leaving his friends behind… friends who are even more miserable than him with memories weighing them down more than any melt-wet cloak.

It was here everything started.

It was Jotunheim that ripped the truth out of Loki, and his soul -his _sanity_- along with it. Jotunheim that speared Fandral and burned Volstagg. Jotunheim, their first venture in too long that was as far from any warrior's victory as could be.

"Thor, is that a tower?" Sif tugged her Prince's cloak, gesturing to what might have been a spire in the distance. "The city, perhaps?"

"'Tis likely." Thor conceded, adjusting their path to align with the gray-white line that clashed with the horizon.

Hogun's voice, grimly practical at the best and worst of times, drifted to them hushed and full of trepidation. "Friends, I… I cannot… see."

Not for the first time, Thor wondered if he shouldn't have just let Loki destroy the place.

* * *

Hogun was uncertain if he should be grateful the blindness had only been temporary. Snow-blindness, as Volstagg had identified, was a common ailment among Aesir during the first Aesir-Jotnar war though at the time it had been thought a dishonorable curse cast by Jotun mages. Given the choice he would have happily taken blissful ignorance to the tower-throne of ivory bone that greeted his eyes now.

The Lokadottir -Not Loki, never Loki, Loki had been many things but not this- sat dressed in a gown of body-hugging blue leather, a skull in her blood splattered hands. "Alas, poor Garm, I knew him well."

"What, _what have you done?" _Thor's voice was layered in hurt and confusion. No king should sound as such. "Why?"

"Do you hear that, sweet wind?" She questioned the air that seemed to collect about her, a warm breeze playing in her hair. "It seeks enlightenment from its goddess! How novel!"

"Loki!" Sif screamed, eyes wide and red and javelin drawn. "For what you have done to my brother… for what you have done to Jotunheim,_ I WILL HAVE VENGEANCE!"_

"Sif!" Fandral.

"Wait!" He spoke, because couldn't Sif see that _was not Loki_. You could not speak or reason with Her as they would Loki - and when was the last time they had _talked_ to Loki instead of going behind his back like… like they so often accused the trickster of?

"Sif, _Stop!" _Thor, desperation ringing true.

Their calls were unheeded, and unnecessary. She shifted on the throne of her people -bones, all ages and sizes, hands and heads and arms and _children_- and Hogun could taste bile as the leather -skins- rippled.

Sif's knees hit the ground as she clutched at her throat, her chest, and the Lokadottir smiled. "How many times must I tell you? The elements themselves bow to me. The sun is my suitor and the moon my handmaiden. You think the air is free? _I_ hold his fealty, his loyalty. It is merely a matter of desire for the air to decide your lungs are unworthy… or for the water of your humors to think they would make the most wondrous home." Sif was coughing, now, each hack accompanied by a splash of red-tinted liquid that froze into a reflective pool. The Lokadottir's smile was gentle.

"You live on my sufferance, little gnat, and I grow weary of your buzzing."

* * *

_She smiled, and she flew, following the voices of the distant stars. She danced, and contents cracked. She sung, and oceans rose. Fire licked at Her skin, Her loins, pleasured Her in ways she never dreamed. _

_And Loki, Loki became a cherished memory, a name spoken of in soft tones with longing._


End file.
